Excellent and rewarding combat. New characters freshen the game. Highly optimized for PC.

Cons

Story campaign is repetitive. Evasion is more complex than it should be. Unwieldy targeting system.

Bottom Line

Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition revitalizes Capcom's stylish action series by adding new playable characters with unique gameplay mechanics.

Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition ($24.99) takes everything that made the original 2008 release an impressive action game and expands on it. The game includes the Legendary Dark Knight enemy horde mode that was added to the original PC port, as well as three new playable characters, improved visuals, and subtle gameplay tweaks. Some of the weaker aspects of the original release, like the repetitive story campaign, remain and slightly tarnishes an otherwise brilliantly polished title. Overall, Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition is a rock-solid action game that is well worth picking up for fans of the series and action buffs alike. It's one of the best PC games you can buy, and is also available for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

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Returning CombatThe Devil May Cry games are challenging action titles with a focus on style and combat flourishes. They give you the tools to not only defeat your enemies, but also to utterly dominate them, and the ever-present Style Gauge judges your performance to encourage aggressive and varied offense. Two mechanics that debuted in the original DMC4 flesh out the combat: Style-switching and the Exceed System.

Exceed is unique to Nero, one of the protagonists. His Red Rose sword can be coated with a fiery substance that changes his next few attacks into explosive versions of the moves you select. Repeatedly tapping the Exceed button fills a gauge next to Nero's health bar, which signals that the sword is being powered up. The sword can be charged up to three times.

What makes Exceed truly interesting is that you can charge your sword during an attack. With this move, called EX-act, you automatically fill one charge of the Exceed gauge by tapping the Exceed button as your attack connects with an enemy. This automatically powers up Nero's next attack. With precise timing, you can strengthen each attack in your combo, turning Nero into a flaming whirlwind of sword slashes.

Dante, the series' mainstay, uses an enhanced version of Devil May Cry 3's style system. He has four base styles, plus a bonus fifth that you earn late in the game, that greatly improve his combat abilities. Each style is useful, and grants him incredible control over his enemies. For example, the Royal Guard style gives Dante a powerful parry and counter ability, while the Trickster style gives him tremendous ground and aerial mobility.

Devil May Cry 3 restricted you to choosing just one style per mission. The original Devil May Cry 4 improved the system by letting you switch styles on the fly. As you can imagine, the combat potential this improvement created is astronomical, as it lets you perform some insanely stylish combos and attacks. This, as well as the three projectile and three melee weapons that Dante has to choose from during combat, made him a beast of a character in Devil May Cry 4. The same is true in the new Special Edition.

Family ReunionDevil May Cry 4 Special Edition goes beyond the scope of the original release by introducing (or reintroducing) three characters to the game.

Vergil, Dante's broody twin brother, makes his gameplay return in Special Edition after an absence. His main gimmick is the Concentration gauge. Rather than chasing enemies, Vergil teleports to them, and Special Edition expects you to use this mechanic to make the most of Vergil's abilities. As Vergil attacks and teleports around the battlefield, a blue concentration gauge above his health bar fills up. His attacks become more damaging and effective as the gauge builds.

For the most part, Vergil's attacks and abilities are based on their DMC3 iterations, but Special Edition greatly expands upon them. For example, Vergil has three katana combos in Special Edition, where as he only had one in DMC3. All of Vergil's Special Edition attacks and combos have been reworked, so fans will recognize many of the abilities, while also relearning how they function in battle. For example, Vergil's rapid slash has noticeable recovery in Special Edition, which it didn't have in the DMC3. However, rapid slash has a follow up aerial attack that cancels the recovery (as does teleportation and the Judgment Cut technique).

Judgment Cut is a flashy, quick-draw katana ability that has been significantly upgraded in Special Edition. The blade, Yamato, glows blue when you briefly hold down the attack button. Releasing the button busts out a powerful explosion of slashes at the nearest enemy. This attack has a slight startup and recovery animation that leaves Vergil vulnerable to attack. However, developer Capcom has designed the move so that if you release the attack the exact frame it charges, you will instantly unleash the judgment cut with no startup, no recovery, and increased damage. This technique requires extremely precise timing, but can be used to cancel any of Yamato's attacks. It's well worth mastering.

A Killer LadyLady and Trish are the two additional characters in Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition. Lady plays through Nero's missions during the story campaign, Trish plays through Dante's missions.

Lady is a projectile-oriented fighter, which is relatively unique in the Devil May Cry games. She has the most limited melee move list of all the characters, but her gun skills are the most developed of all characters, rivaling Dante's capabilities. Her melee moves include a ground/aerial three-hit combo, a spin attack, and a ground smash. Much like Nero, Lady has a long-range grapple that lets her throw enemies into the air or onto the ground. Lady's melee abilities are designed to support and set up her projectile attacks, which greatly contrasts with the other characters in the game.

Lady is armed with a pair of pistols, a shotgun, and a rocket launcher. All can be fired normally, or they can be charged up to three times to deal heavier damage. In addition, all of Lady's projectiles have special attacks that can be performed with forward/back inputs with the special attack button. Pistols fire a volley of powerful shots, for example, while Kalina Ann unleashes a storm of seeker missiles.

Most of Lady's projectiles require some charge or setup for optimal power, which makes her a much slower character to play with compared to the rest of the cast. Her projectiles are also incredibly powerful compared to others, so she is fairly easy to use.

Lightning BlondeTrish was originally an unlockable character in Devil May Cry 2. Many of Trish's moves in DMC2 were based on Dante's abilities from the original Devil May Cry. She was armed with the demonic Sparda sword and could switch between sword and fist fighting styles on the fly.

Special Edition's Trish's abilities are inspired by her DMC2 incarnation, as well as her Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 move set. Rather than switching between weapons, Trish swings her fists (the basic attack button), and unleashes Sparda sword combos (the special attack button). She can also throw the Sparda sword into a crowd to stun them, or to pull them to her much like Nero's grapple. When Trish throws the Sparda around, she gets a few bonus attacks and fist combos.

Like Dante and Lady, Trish is armed with a pair of pistols that she can use to supplement her attacks. They are relatively weak, but they have moderate stopping power, making them useful for interrupting enemies. She is also armed with Dante's shape shifting firearm Pandora, albeit with fewer forms. These forms can be accessed by performing a directional input while charging a shot, and they deal great damage.

All of this makes Trish a very accessible character, but her abilities are robust enough that they are satisfying to master. She has plenty of offensive abilities that supplement her melee combos, like her lightning trail dive-kicks or her electrifies jumps. Her sword-throwing abilities also give her great versatility, because she can easily control a crowd of enemies or draw distant enemies to her.

Souls and StyleSpecial Edition's slight gameplay tweaks make things a little less frustrating than the original DMC4 release. One of the biggest changes is how currency works. Proud Souls, the currency used to buy abilities, is very easy to come by in Special Edition. The original release required a significant amount of grinding to earn all skills for both Dante and Nero. In Special Edition, Proud Souls are shared among all characters, and they are much more generously awarded.

Because each character has such a widely varied list of abilities, Special Edition lets you customize controls for each one to your preference. Nero, for instance, makes great use of his charged shots, but it is difficult to charge a projectile while also fending off enemies with the default controller setting. Mapping the shoot button to a trigger makes this considerably easier. You may find that you don't need the function, but it is nice that it's there.

As mentioned, the previously PC exclusive Legendary Dark Knight mode is available in Special Edition. This sets the game to hard mode difficulty, but radically increases the number of enemies that spawn in an area, as well as the types of enemies that appear. In other difficulties, you would expect to fight four to six fodder enemies at a time. In Legendary Dark Knight mode, that number is easily tripled or quadrupled. This radically changes how you approach the game and makes the story campaign much more fun to replay.

Lastly, a handful of grappling and platforming sections have been tweaked to be slightly less frustrating. Fortuna Castle features a few extra grappling points to make accessing treasure slightly easier, for example.

Graphical ImprovementsSpecial Edition improves the game's visuals by enhancing texture quality, shadow quality, anti-aliasing, and the overall resolution. Like the original DMC4 PC release, Special Edition is highly optimized for PC builds and can accommodate a wide range of computers. There's an easy to use performance test option right on the title screen that makes testing the various PC settings a cinch.

Supported resolution range from 640 by 480p to 1920 by 1080p. Texture resolution can be changed from Low to Super-High, as can the game's shadow quality. MSAA can be altered from no anti-aliasing to up to 8x MSAA.

The screen refresh rate ranges from 60Hz to up to 144Hz. This is particularly important when considering frame rate. Combat inputs in Special Edition are extremely precise, and a high frame rate is ideal for the most precise inputs possible.

At max settings and 1080p, my gaming rig played Special Edition at anywhere from 160 to 200 frames per second with VSync turned off. My monitor displays at 120hz, so I set the screen refresh rate to 120hz and left Vsync on, so as to mitigate screen tearing.

Devil's DanceDMC's combat is heavily reliant on the targeting system to expand the move list. This wouldn't be much of an issue, except that switching targets is disappointingly clunky. This was a flaw in the original DMC4 release that has not been corrected. Basically, you can't switch your target while moving around. If the game detects any analog stick or WASD movement while attempting to switch targets, you simply won't switch targets. What makes this all the more jarring is that you could switch targets while moving in DMC3. This flaw doesn't break the game by any stretch, but it being forced to stop briefly just to switching targets is a nuisance.

This clunky feel spills into evasion, which is unfortunate for an action game as demanding as DMC4. All characters have a basic dodge roll designed to make avoiding attacks easier. Well-timed evasions earn you style points. However, evasion is entirely dependent on your orientation relative to the enemy. You can only dodge left or right in Special Edition. To alleviate this somewhat, DMC4's jumping has significant invincibility on start up, which makes it a viable defensive ability. But I would have much preferred a universal dodge button, like in Bayonetta or Ninja Gaiden, than the situational left/right roll in Devil May Cry.

Lastly, the story campaign hasn't changed at all since the original DMC4 back in 2008. You fight your way through a demon-infested cityscape, a frozen castle, a cursed jungle, and the villain's stronghold as Nero, and then you do it all over again in reverse as Dante. The new characters make this feel slightly less tedious thanks to their unique play styles, but playing through the campaign more than once can feel like busywork.

The Last Great DMC GameDevil May Cry 4 marked the end of the series for some. Capcom hadn't touched the series since 2008, and while the Ninja Theory reboot DmC was a solid action game, it lacked the series' control, humor, aesthetic and overall style. Yet, Special Edition's richness makes it crystal clear that the developers at Capcom still know to design a Devil May Cry game. Vergil, Trish, and Lady are every bit as fun to play with as the veterans Dante and Nero. We can only hope to see Capcom work on developing and improving the series in the future.

Gabriel Zamora is as passionate about writing as he is about video games and electronics, and his fervor has led to game and tech article contributions in a variety of online publications including PCMag.com, Examiner.com, 2D-X.com, and Multiplayergames.com. When not criticizing the state of gaming or reviewing tech, Gabriel spends much of his time attending related events in New York City, catching up on his favorite written works, or trying out new cooking recipes at home. You can follow him on Twitter: @Dracozombie....
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